


The Toil of the Just

by Sarablade



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drama, Dubious Consent, Explicit Language, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, Gen, Hate Sex, Heroism, Infidelity, Love, Love/Hate, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Dilemmas, Older Man/Younger Woman, Rough Sex, Sexual Content, Treason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-05-30 07:05:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6413833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarablade/pseuds/Sarablade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snape/Granger</p><p>Harry's been killed. Death Eaters are gaining control of the Ministry. The remnants of Dumbledore's Army hide in a cave and fight... or try to.  Snape comes in to taunt and teach them, and finds himself a prize pupil...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the cave

**Author's Note:**

> The work is complete in 6 chapters, and I'm toying with the idea of a sequel...
> 
> Do I need to say reviews are the Muse's fuel? I do thank you for the kudos, really. But even one single word reflecting your opinion is so much better (I don't even dream of both).

Enjoy, and please please tell me if you did... or not.

Ah. They're still not mine.

* * *

**Chapter One**

It starts in October. 

He suddenly appears, a black outline in the oblong rectangle of light of the doorframe of the cave where we've hid the servers, and Stuns us all. The room is lit only by the fire under my two cauldrons and the three computer screens Neville, Hannah and Cho huddle over. 

Twelve of us in total, all that's left, to fight an underground war against a real army, secret also, but much more powerful. The Carrows have taken Hogwarts, and the gormless hands of Minister Fudge shake on the Ministry's reins. His only feat has been the appointment of a strong Vice Minister, and he now cowers in his luxurious office, afraid of getting out lest he'll be taken care of the way Dumbledore has, or Kissed by one of the Dementors which are now roaming more or less freely the corridors of the Ministry, under the benevolent auspices of the Vice Minister A. Dolohov. 

Vice Minister Dolohov does not despise the good of the Wizarding World like his predecessors. He took the right measures. Five hundred eighty Aurors, out of a total of six hundred, have been urgently dispatched to the Continent to help fight a terribly important war against garden gnomes. They're stationed, the news has come back, each in a different garden all around Europe, cut out from each other… and from us. 

Those who stayed, we avoid. Kingsley's advice. 

The surge in petty and not-so-petty crime is also a favorite target of our beloved Vice Minister A. Dolohov, who every day urges the "underground rival factions" to come to a truce together. The lack of Aurors, he adamantly sustains, has nothing to do with "it".

A battle of the shadows leaving the rest of the world free to continue more or less living their obscured lives as usual… for now. Everybody knows, but so few dare to join us. Only we remain, and a few sympathetic bartenders, shopkeepers, Healers… some smattering of good people clinging to their lives as well, or as badly, as they can. 

We have the brains and the brawn, and that fiery drive in our guts. The desperation. The cave, too, where we convene and work together. Nobody modified the wards, which Snape himself in all his devious splendor had crafted when the Order still believed in him. The thought had crossed my mind, to tell the truth. I'd discussed it with Ron and Anthony and we decided to say nothing to the others, thinking maybe Snape would need the cave as a last-resort shelter, were he to be run aground by the Ministry or the Death Eaters… It's becoming harder every day to tell the difference, yet each would try to get at him for the opposite reasons. 

Anyway… he has us all disabled and bound, heaped against the wall before we recognize whose face it is under the Death Eater mask. 

"How fitting," he hisses, and a very small part of the fear I felt dissipates when I identify his voice, replaced by something else, another kind of tension. 

"Dumbledore's Army, unaware and clueless as usual. Helpless, too, for want of real warrior skills. Didn't even have the minimum intelligence to change the wards after I killed him?" 

I'd slap my forehead if I wasn't been bound, or try to explain. Or slap my forehead for wanting to try to explain. To him, no less. 

He leisurely looms over the cauldrons, and I'm half-relieved to see him put a stasis spell over one of them, saving a whole week of hard brewing-labor towards a hex-repelling potion, which had come just now to the point where adding the asphodel root was essential. We've been chasing asphodel for months, and Ron barely succeeded a few days before in buying some on the black market, shrivelled and grey, but… We're getting really good at making do with what we have. 

Snape smells, stirs… tastes and spits. 

 

"Really, Granger… if that's the way you brew I'm quite relieved you look the way you do. Were you any less ugly, one of the whelps here might have been in danger of tasting your… shall I say cooking? Not that the deathly result would have been unwanted, but… there are limits to cruelty, after all. Or did you let this poor wriggling excuse for a carpet touch a cauldron?" His chin points at Neville, who's somehow wriggled out, and has been trying to crawl towards the server switch. 

Snape's heavy boot lashes at him, comes back blood-stained as Neville slumps unconscious on the floor. Snape raises his face at the horrified gulp and smiles crookedly at young, blond Anselm Diggory's rather comical efforts to get himself off the ground. 

"Hey, you, wasn't it enough your brother got killed for nothing but the glory of the Boy-Who-Didn't-Live- Long-Enough-To-Be-Of-Any-Real-Help… to your side?"

He grins his dying-mask grin. "Actually… If your mother is still like I remember her from school… Makes sense you'd rather die here than live at home. Pity," he shakes his head, "we could have made a first-class Death Eater out of her… Maybe we still can. I shall have to take it up with the Dark Lord." 

 

Anselm's eyes stretch themselves into perfect circles, but the black buzzard has turned his attention to the cauldron. He bins my asphodel, takes another root, plump and flame-red and oozing the precious milk, from his robes, and begins chopping and crushing in earnest. He even has a silver stirring rod, and my mouth involuntarily curves itself into a rueful smile when I catch his disgusted eyes on my makeshift silver-plated copper knife, a remnant from my grandmother's wedding service I scavenged from my parents' abandoned house. 

 

No Transfiguration or magic possible for fear of tainting the potions, I've hammered and beaten it into shape... more or less. He pinches it carefully between his gloved thumb and index, lips curling in distaste, and throws it at Goldstein's face. Anthony could duck his head, the only body part we can move, but it would mean Cho catches the blow. So he doesn’t. 

 

Blood begins to flow from his cheek. He'd been the only one of us unharmed from Snape's attack, maybe thanks to his judo skills. My knife flies back into Snape's hands. He smirks again, and approaches us. He scrapes the slash on the Diggory boy's cheek with it, before using its now dripping blade to brush an abhorrent, revoltingly erotic caress on the faces of Cho and Hannah, where the blood he collects from the others mixes with that which flows from their noses. And he goes through all of us, cruelly smirking and caressing, taunting each of us in turn. 

 

Pansy gets the worst of it, though. Somehow her past in his House, and also their similarly iffy allegiance to the so-called Pureblood side must have given her the idea he'd humor her. 

"Are you going to treat us the way you did Dumbledore, then," she asks in a half-flirting, half-insolent way when he gets to her. 

"'Us' being this pitiful farce you call Dumbledore's Army? Maybe I should."

He paces, swirls his black cape around. If I didn't know him better I'd say he's fidgeting. " What did I do, really? Put a crippled dog out of its misery. Isn't it a good deed, in your little book of petty values?" He comes to an abrupt stand in front of me. The green and red glow of the fires and the screens sculpts his gaunt face into a Hellish mask. "Maybe I will." 

 

He comes back to her, and his gloved hand cups her jaw in a parody of a lover's hold... holds and twists until tears flow from her eyes and her neck looks about to rip. He back-hands her with the modified knife, too, before using his gloved finger to mix all the bloods on its blade, and carefully dripping seven drops of it in the cauldron. The potion bubbles and smokes, and I think, from the smell, that some of the washed-out ingredients I had used have come to life again. Couldn't somebody have told me about that fresh-blood thing, I fume internally? And what was that blue powder? 

 

An alarm flashes on one of the computers. Snape steps towards them and squints at the screens, careful not to touch anything. He Reenervates Neville and sits him before the computer. "You are going to do what's needed, Longbottom, and to explain everything to me. Every step. Very clearly." Neville has a quick look at the screens, then at us. 

He turns to Muggle Eric Chetra, the older brother of Ravenclaw's Muggle-born Charity Chetra, who'd been killed in the very first attack on a Hogsmeade week-end. We've recruited him for his hacker skills and his quasi-magical powers... and for the way his soul burns with hate for those who've tortured and killed his kid sister.

I've always thought he should have been drafted into Hogwarts anyway. There are Purebloods with less magic than him, and nobody calls them Squibs. 

"Well," Ron said matter-of-factly when I broached the subject, "it's because they're Purebloods." 

Neville speaks through a swelling, open upper lip. "He… He's the one who knows, sir. I'm only helping." 

Oh the quiet heroism of him. He could have strung Snape along, after all he navigates and manipulates the Muggle networks like a pro, so that they impact the most intricate aspects of Wizarding life in imperceptible ways, including Portkeys' ranges and Apparition points coordinates. Something with magnetic fields emanating from the vegetation, that Eric and him have worked out together… I've helped with the mathematical modeling, but the ideas and the knowledge are Neville's. And it works. We know, we've seen the results. 

 

"Bested by a Mudblood, then, Longbottom? And one without magical powers, to boot… How fitting. Come here, you!" Eric's binds magically vaporize and he advances cautiously towards the computers. 

 

It is one of the longest nights we've known until then, but only the prelude to many still longer, as we mutely watch Snape methodically, relentlessly, intensely suck the two boys' brains until morning. At some point he indicates a simpler way to trace Death Eaters Apparition points, based on some low-level magical frequency emitted by the Dark Mark, and then a modification of a plant's signature to track magical people. A bit later, he frees us all from our bounds, and gestures us to continue whatever we were doing. 

 

To this day I don't know why we trust him that night, or why none of us confronts him. Maybe because of the implicit bond, almost visible, that sprouts between Eric and him almost immediately. Or maybe the effect of the potion he's doctored, which left us all feeling more alive than we have for the past malnourished months… 

 

He stiffly stands up a little time before sunrise. 

"Thank you," he drops, his very courtesy an insult. "You gave me important and valuable information, which I shall see is put to," he smirks and emphasizes, "good use. Next time you feel the urge to spill your collective naive guts, you may think to ask for some proof of the recipient's reliability. After all," he turns around, sneers at each of us in turn before Disappearing in cracking despise of our wards, "I'm going back to the Dark Lord to report…" 

 

After he's gone out we look at each other dumbly, then chaos erupts. We scan the place for monitoring spells and change the wards the same afternoon, and scatter in the expectation of an imminent Death Eaters' attack which never comes. Slowly we begin using the cave again. After he's "visited" Anselm, then Hannah, then me, in our respective hiding holes, we go back to the cave like before, go back to our abnormal norm. 

 

He will make it a habit to drop in from time to time for the next weeks, bringing potions ingredients, ridiculing our wards over and over again, until we cave in and ask him to cast them. 

Inexplicably, we feel a little more secure afterwards.


	2. Halloween

**Second chapter**

 

Still not mine. And it _is_ a SS/HG story...

* * *

Actually, it begins the day before Halloween. We're having a nasty argument concerning our priorities. Cho –who's not recovering from a bad belly wound she got while dueling a Death Eather when we rushed to the defense of an attacked Muggle family -, Eric and Neville favor the defense of attacked Muggle families of wizards; Pansy, Ron and Anselm want to secure money and weapons, and Patrick, Ryan and Hannah hotly vie to go and take out as many Death Eaters as we can, in commando-like sorties. 

"Yeah. Like the raid which almost killed Cho. We must prioritize for the long run, not run amok and endanger ourselves for any little insignificant nobodies…," hisses Pansy. "That's the problem with Mudbloods. They've seen too many movies, action and fantasy alike, and believe in all of them."

"Nobodies?" Patrick reaches for his wand. 

So does Pansy. 

So does Ariella.

So does Hannah.

In less than two seconds they're up and ready to maim each other. Anthony and I exchange alarmed glances.

Ron, the undisputed leader of our piteous platoon, grabs Eric's head, pushes him under the table and jumps backwards, over and behind the table. He's covering us all with his wand before we understand exactly what he's done. He gives a meaningful glance at the fireside, on the other side of the room.

"Expelliarmus!" Anselm Diggory, from his seat by the fire, disarms all of them. His sallow pale features are both feral and afraid. "We can't fight each other," he heaves. "We're just not strong enough. We must stick together to fight Vol… VDM. Only VDM." Ron and he share that look, which says they're afraid for our collective sanity.

"Shake your Mudblood friends back into reality, then!" Pansy's features are contorted in rage. Looking at them, I suddenly realize we all look too old, and too young, for what we're doing. Misfits.

Cho struggles to stand up to Patrick's defense. "Stop saying that filthy word."

"Oh come on, Cho. You think Patrick cares for the Wizarding World as much as we do? You see… _your boyfriend_ cares for nothing any more, except maybe his sister… Apart from watching Muggle TV and pining for their Mum and Dad they haven't done anything useful for weeks… Except getting you almost killed for unknown Mudbloods. Maybe cousins of his, for all I know. He's not blood-blind, either. What the-" The last words are croaked rather than said.

We were wedged between the rough tables and attached wooden benches of the Three Heads, the drinking pub we've quartered ourselves in under the immovable protection of Hagrid and his cousin Rabelkus, the landlord, and of around seven hundred years' worth of protective charms. We could have used it for the Order, but Albus and Minerva, it transpires from Hagrid's ramblings, thought the place wasn't dignified enough. 

We like it just fine: the drinks are on the house. That is… we've liked it just fine until Snape suddenly materializes behind the bar, his trademark smirk a little less cold as he Petrifies us all, again, and Rabelkus turns to pour him a large Firewhisky with the silent ease achieved only through very long trusted practice, then slides it to the newcomer along the old polished wood.

The drink seems to find Snape's hand on its own. The wizard drinks avidly, thirstily, and only then terminates the spell.

About one-tenth of a second later we're all standing, wands drawn at him. Cho, too, pale as death, her other hand holding her stomach.

"Tss tss," grouch both Rabelkus and Snape. "This won't do," says the landlord. "He's been my honored guest since long before any of you was born. Wands down." Snape and he proceed to add a few lines to an apparently long-running deprecating commentary on today's youth.

"It's come to that," says Snape, "that in order to appease the spoiled brats the Powers that be are preparing a surprise treat, Apparating all sixth-years to America for Halloween. And letting them roam by themselves there, yet. One can only guess what the whelps will come up to there…" 

Hannah and Pansy are the first to catch his meaning, and freeze on the spot. "And you're going to let this happen?" they shriek. We're all wordless with the magnitude of the catastrophe looming. 

"I am, as you may remember, a Hogwarts' employee. And you shall of course remember that any information, which you may have spied in your little sly shameful eavesdropping into my private confidential conversation with an old and trusted friend shall be held against you, should you get caught trying to stop this with any ill-advised hexes. Not like this pitiful band of… dunderheads," he turns to Rabelkus with a blood-curdling smile, "to think of adapting any old magic they may have learned in their fifth-year, like camouflaging charms, or hex-repelling potions to soak their coats…Portkeying the kids' masks... or building on the anti-Apparition mechanisms existing at Hogwarts the way the old fool built them in the Room of Requirements…"

I catch Neville and Anthony's stares on him. They reflect mine, at once grim and starry-eyed. He's giving us an intellectual and strategic challenge, clues hidden in his offhanded insults… the best kind of bonus-point homework. 

We either get the bonus, or a penalty in the form of dead schoolchildren.

He stays all night again, viciously Healing Cho with a spell which leaves her screaming in pain for at least five minutes, until her voice gives out and she can only whimper, and then she whimpers until she faints. It's not like we care to stop him, we know she's dying anyway, so whatever he does… he can only help. He takes Patrick away for a long conversation, and when they come back their faces vie for grimness.

All night, he taunts and vilifies us into finding the correct chain of spells and charms so all the kids will bounce relatively unharmed into a clearing in the Forbidden Forest where we'll be waiting and prepared to protect them, immediately after landing in the magic-crocodiles-ridden marsh in Florida the students don’t know they're bound for. America indeed. Then he terrorizes us into devising a Hell-proof fighting strategy. He is constantly deprecating, hateful, and so abhorrent even Pansy and Eric join forces against him. 

In the morning he silently gears himself for the sortie with us. 

"Aren't you going to be missed, Sir?" I try to determine whether Ron is worried for him, or from him going to turn against us during the Battle.

"Thank you for your motherly concern, Weasley." I'd hit anybody daring to talk to me in that false unctuous tone, and I can only imagine Ron's effort not to. "If you must know," continues Snape with the same hit-my-smart-face smile, "dear Poppy is currently nursing me after a particularly vicious bout of a very catching venereal disease, which I didn't know about until last week. I had Alecto's most worried visit yesterday evening, and it is my belief she is currently undergoing a series of… shall we say invasive, tests at St. Mungo's. I hear her brother's very worried about the results, too… a manifestation of his… brotherly love for her. The Carrows' legendary focus on their pupils might be… a little off, today of all days."

We're only teenagers, after all, and nothing could have prevented the bout of raucous laughter which shakes us all. It takes Ron only five more seconds to stick his foot solidly in his mouth.

He's still wobbling with laughter as he asks, "We know what they're doing with each other, but… Why should she fear she's caught it from y-" and then he stops, saucer-like eyes and mouth fixed on Snape. 

"It's a pity you ate so much breakfast, Ron, especially when we have so little," Pansy's mouth is pursed tighter than her mother's, when she heard her daughter may have to share a workbench with a Muggleborn. "You look like you're going to give your breakfast back to the community."

The hate between them is palpable.

"The both of you," Snape delicately remarks, "are excellent proof that old Pureblood families do have to fear the results of too much inbreeding." He's unkempt, I remark. Not only from the night. His clothes do not remember the severe splendor they once diffused, and his smell is older than his week-old stubble. He looks ragged, and ragging.

"We-" They begin talking together, only to be together cut out by Snape. "I'm not finished. What I was going to say is, too bad your parents will have to hide together when this is over."

He shrugs their questions away and forms us into a more professional battling formation than we've ever achieved. And we need it that day. I still don't like to remember, but suffice to say we make it back on our feet, all but one, and not one student was harmed any worse than what Poppy can heal in a day or two. Physically, at least.

The Carrows, from their daybeds in St-Mungo, still catch on really quick, after the first kids rebound from their surprise Halloween destination (you must give it to the Carrows- having kids eaten alive by magic crocodiles in Florida does have some Halloween flavor. What a surprise for the parents.) 

But we interfere, and they catch on. They leave St. Mungo's, and they move fast. Not to the Forbidden Forest, it's dangerous, but to Hogwarts, and to the Ministry. And somebody has the clout to send Dementors into the Forest clearing. Snape is nowhere to be seen. I am the first in point-man position as we form a protective V before the gaggle of terrified kids, who keep Apparating back and forth with no idea if the crocodiles are worse, or the cross-fire of spells when they land back in a Forbidden Forest clearing. 

It is my first face-to-lack-of-a-face with Dementors. And I lose. I lose miserably.

All our Patroni have been sucked away in the black gloom the Dementors project, all the kids' too. A few seconds before I've noticed the fighting skills of some of the kids (they're actually all of three years younger than we are, those kids, older than the three of us were when… concentrate, H, concentrate), and silently marked them for recruitment. But now all our combined strengths cannot repel those nightmare figures advancing on us, and the cold...

"Maneuver three," I yell. We've perfected it during the night, as Snape forced us to form a strategy in case of a Dementors' attack, which we dismissed as ridiculous over-planning. All the others, except Ariella who is catatonic with fear and lays in fetus-position at the edge of the clearing, mumbling nonsense, join in the spell we've repeated, and the whole group disappears, with the kids, into the relative security of Hogsmeade's tavern, where Shacklebolt is by pure coincidence drinking a pint with two of the few trustworthy Aurors left, by pure coincidence on leave nearby.

It is a suicide mission for me, and we all know it. I was chosen at Cho's behest and mine (and over Ron's reluctance) because of my magical capacity, because my Patronus may hold longer, as it is the strongest, the clearest, the brightest, the… most totally useless f..ing piece of dwindling junk as it just puffs up and dies in mere seconds. The foul soul-vacuuming drecks are coming on to me, and I concentrate on my happiest memories which are in fact no more than pathetic plastic snapshots and I crumple from within and…

And a figure comes flying in between the Dementors and me. No Patronus. A real, tangible, black-caped, frightening figure. At the beginning I think it is one of them. It stands almost as tall and its aura is as cold as the Dementors'. It advances towards them, uttering a string of totally unknown spells in a dismembered, unreal deep voice that speaks Aramaic, and they all take a step back, all but the Dementor leader. The biggest, darkest, coldest Dementor turns back to his army and tells them something and they slink away, all but their leader. All but.

And the two figures advance towards one another, hovering above and under the ground. Don't ask me how. And they embrace. I am freezing from the inside, and the sights that fill the clearing (and etch themselves in the most central part of my being) have been drawn in blood and entrails in the arenas of the Romans where the prisoners were kept dying for weeks, one drop of water for each drop of blood, and the torture racks of the Chinese, and the punctured plastic bags of Pol Pot in which opposants were left to suffocate for days. They come from the pits and the ovens of Auschwitz and Treblinka, they howl the wails of fathers burned alive with their tortured children, and of mothers whose legs have been bound together at the time of giving birth. I cannot bear it, and I cannot stop. And the horrifying cuddle goes on, projecting images of magical and Muggle torture so creative the mind fails and the guts turn themselves inside out. On and on.

And then, don't ask me how, the void wins. It's just a huge expanse of anti-matter. Absolute cold. An absence of space. I want to crumble but I can't. And then, mercifully, I feel my consciousness ebbing into oblivion, only for a flicker of a second, and I not-hear Snape's voice. _Hold._ So I do.

After I endure centuries of pain so deep Bellatrix' Cruciatus becomes a fond memory, I feel a change. At the price of exhausting effort I force my scrunched eyes open to see the Dementor falter. It makes it to the clearing's edge, stepping backwards but still locked in that mad embrace with the other figure… and then… only the ragged cape remains, which the mystery figure drops to the earth, and sets fire to. I've seen how you kill a Dementor. I don't like it.

The figure comes towards me, and I'm ready and eager to AK myself by my own trembling wand. Positively enthusiastic, in fact, if it's the means to ensure I don't have to see –feel– those pictures again. But as I point my wand towards my head the hood falls back, and the Potions Professor looks at me, his usual cadaver-like amiable self. O but he looks absolutely yummy, compared to what I will never be able to stop to remember, now. Strawberries and cream on a bed of maggot-filled death. Will my stomach ever stop heaving?

"W-What did you do?" I manage to croak after five minutes of shaking and retching. What jolts me back to reality is realising I've soiled myself. I Scourgify my body and clothes hastily, almost scrubbing myself raw, so out-of-control my magic is.

"Would you like me to Obliviate you?" he asks suavely. His aura has not changed, though, and I recoil from him although I don't want to. I mean, I want to, but he just saved my life. Or maybe he just damned it for eternity.

In any case I hug myself, nails biting into my shoulders' flesh, and shake my head. I clamp my jaws shut so I don't break any more teeth by clattering. I've already swallowed a few… Maybe later I'll beg to forget. Now I must understand. "W-What did you do?" I stutter again, without unclamping.

He leers, and now I know what these eyes hide, I find it extraordinary he can manage even that terrifying excuse for a smile, or any kind of facial expression that is not accompanied by howling to death.

"I Kissed it back," he says.

 

Please review, I also need some solace.


	3. Tete a tete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath or beginning? After the Battle of Halloween Snape takes Hermione in for a night of... teachings.

3d chapter  
Not mine.

As I wrote before, this is no fluff.

* * *

"We've been back six hours, and she's still not responding…" I look at Ariella, still twitching and mumbling on the pub floor. Flashbacks from the scene in the clearing mar everything I say and see, and my mind plays in a loop Snape's parting words, as he handed me a miniature jug before Apparating away. 

"You shall drink this, and let it take action for five minutes. You're not up to fighting anyway, no magical strength left. Immediately after, you shall bring that useless waif down there back to your burrow, or put her down, but don't let her here to be taken hostage. Oh, and… Miss Granger?" 

I could only nod and try not to puke all over myself again, or run to the woods howling for my mother. Although, when you think what there is in the woods, and what they did to mothers… sit tight and nod, then. 

"Don't mouth a word of what happened here before I've gone over it with you. Your silence can win the war... or inversely."

And he went.

 

"Time flies when you're having fun." Ron slouches on the stone floor, his back to the Three Heads' wall. I'm sitting just next to him, hands laced, drawing comfort from the simple goodness of our shoulders and ribs touching. We're all scattered haphazardly around, in various stages of liquefaction. Family. _Families are tortured and killed, and you worry for them until they are, and weep for them after_. Ariella hasn't let go of my hand ever since I've brought her back. The others were already there, recovering from a very short, very vicious clash which ended mysteriously, they say, as the Death Eaters just popped away after being hit with volleying burn hexes coming from… nowhere, and the massive hex-launching by the Hogwarts' teachers, rushed into Hogsmeade to Kingsley's urgent plea, under the Carrows' noses. Dedicated education professionals, they, even though that's not gonna do them good with their Board of Directors.

Somehow the Dementors seem to be confined to the Forest, and apparently can't make it into Hogsmeade... Good to know.

We're slumped and weary, too exhausted to eat, our minds full with the sounds and the sights and the strain of the day. My mind is full with pictures of…. Don't go there. I will not go there.

But I do. Nausea threatens. Again.

Snape hasn't been seen since the fight. Ryan says the Potions Teacher slunk back to his sickbed in Hogwarts, replacing the crude-ish manikin Poppy is nursing, for the Carrows' evening visit. There will certainly be a rendition of the attack, and eloquent threats to whoever has leaked the Halloween-visit program, though with tens of seventh- and sixth-year gushing about it since morning, and the Faculty, tracing the mole will be impossible. We hope so, at least. 

At some point Pansy mumbles "thanks" at Eric, looking at him from under the impressive egg she nurses on her forehead. 

"Why don't you just admit you tripped over your own boots instead of jumping as Eric signaled you to?" Cho's mouth is mean and drawn. She's hale and sound, and sour.

"I was sincerely thanking him, you cow. He pushed me just after he signaled, and the second hex flew over my head. I'd have been fried if I'd jumped."

"I didn't push you," Eric says.

"You certainly did. I felt a… something, and I fell. Only you were standing there, it was where all those hexes came from nowhere. I… I thought somebody had devised some charm or something, to give you some kind of fighting powers, to go with this weird battlefield control contraption of yours." 

"It wasn't me. And I have no magical fighting powers…" He sounds sad, at that, although his contraption felled many a Death Eater.

"It was Snape pushed you down." Cho's eyes are starry, now, and it gives a wholly unhealthy aura to her grim face. I'd use "creepy", if I dared.

"Oh, now you've a crush on Snape, too?" Pansy's more intent on attacking Cho than letting a Mudblood get dressed down? My, the things war does to us. Once again the pictures attack, and I shake my head to dissipate them. 

"He's saved my life," Cho says with a quiet defiance I've seen only in Ron yet.

"She's right." Ron Our Captain leans into my ear as the two girls bicker along. "Snape was Disillusioned, but he was fighting for us in Hogsmeade. He disappeared for a while, and then I identified him coming back through this widget he and Neville gave me to track everyone's magical signatures and correspond with Eric. He fights like a demon."

_That's what he is_ , I want to shout, but I'm afraid to open even the smallest channel into what happened at the clearing. I've avoided the deluge of questions they hurled at me after their first shock at seeing me alive. I smile at the remembrance of the rib-splitting hug Ron grabbed me into, the pure joy in his eyes, the dazzling smile incongruous on his battle-weary grim face, suddenly so grown-up the freckles seem a grotesque mistake spread on his thrice-broken and badly repaired nose, because who's got time for esthetical Healing when there's a war going on. The exhilaration at finding each other alive and able to enjoy the love he and I share, untouched. Something else we owe Snape, I think, and a cold sliver of glass cuts into my chest. 

In the end we pick each other up from the floor, tuck Ariella in a makeshift bed behind the bar, and ingest the stew Rabelkus has prepared, and then the alcohol flows. We're usually wary from loss of control, but tonight… I think tonight none of us wants to look his or her dreams in the eye alone, and we react the way of trauma victims immemorial. I see couples forming, old couples like Cho with Patrick or Anselm and Luna, but also Ron and Hannah …I've spent months trying to tell him she'd be perfect for him, and I'm happy he finally acts on it, when I almost swallow from the nose as I catch Pansy and Eric sharing a… this kind of look. Well, she hit her head, didn't she? 

Anthony's trying to get my attention, and I know I really should… he's right for me in all aspects… the boy my whole family would have been delighted to see me bring home… but I can't. I give him a minute shake of my head and he nods his, sad but smiling. We've always understood each other perfectly. If only I could… but I can't. 

Well, his looks and his brains, he's only got to go cruising any Muggle bar, the way he does every so often. I give Anthony a little smile and tilt my head to the door, and, of course, he understands. From the corner of my eyes I see Ron giving me a worried glance over Hannah's head, and I signal him to mind his own business. Hers, actually.

Anthony responds to me with a mimic of his own, a mix of wistful, amused, ironic and tender… I so wish I could. We exchange another thousand words in two grimaces, and this third brother-in-arms of mine downs a small phial of Invigorata potion, arranges his curly mane and his Muggle clothes, and walks out, whistling, giving me a small wiggle of his elegant fingers.

As they sing in football stadiums, he never has to walk alone.

Speaking of which…Snape's materialized. One look at him and Rabelkus doesn't bother to pour the Firewhisky into a glass, sends the square flask gliding towards him on the bartop. 

He slurps and smacks his lips, glaring at us, a wicked angry grimace I can only associate with him finding us rummaging in his personal reserves. Ignorant bliss. "Luck is blind," he drawls at Ron. "I've never seen such a sloppy, amateurish fighting arrangement. Chess whiz?" He snorts. "As to you," he turns to Pansy, "you owe your life to the Mudblood here…" his chin is pointing aggressively at Eric, "and to your own clumsiness. Pride of my House, be gone."

His eyes censoriously row over our seating (and hugging) arrangements, the empty bottles strewn on the table. "Party's over," he suddenly decrees.

"But…"

He silences Anselm with only a frown. "I may not be your teacher any more, Mr. Diggory. But I can see you've had enough for today. Besides…" his glance fixes theatrically on Anselm's hand under Luna's shirt, "puppies like you may need time to do whatever has you panting that way, but they also need sleep, and I shall expect you all tomorrow at eight in the cave, fit, for an important training session. Scat."

Unimaginably, we all stand up. They're all coupled up, and I stand out, like the proverbial sore… I'm sore all right. 

His smirk deepens. "I imagine I'll have to play knight once more and see you home, Granger." 

We live scattered all over the place, but never go home or stay alone before the flat has been given a serious once-over by a team of at least two. Once bitten.

We Apparate, then Portkey, then walk together in the night, go through all the tedious business of arriving and entering and unwarding and checking and… all my exhausted being is yearning for sleep, now. Except I know what kind of dreams await.

We are standing in my dingy bedsitter. We smell. Of battle, smoke, death, sweat and blood and Firewhisky and…

He must have caught the quiver of my nostrils, as he looks down at me from under his matted, smelly hair. "I suggest you take a shower before we sit down to business. Mix one spoonful of Invigorata in your shampoo. It can't make your hair worse in any case. Drink the rest." He looks around him, at the appliances and the sink masquerading as kitchenette against the farther wall. "I'll make the coffee."

I'm too numb to protest. When I come back fully clothed in jeans, a heavy sweater over thermal undies, and thick socks in my reserve boots, I feel less tired and exposed. The ginger-lemon-mint smell of the Invigorata pleasantly clings to my skin (and yes, what's left of my hacked curls is stronger, shinier, but also more… bouncy. Not that I'd care, but he remarked on it.) 

He looks at me, then at himself. "Would it be a terrible imposition if I were to ask you for the use of your shower?"

I wordlessly Accio a ready bundle of men's clothes from under the bed. It's not like I'm not used to having guests – hiding fugitives – spending the night.

He comes back looking like a huge, slightly menacing wet cat, his nose sticking out of his face and his wrists rather pathetically out of the grayish shirtsleeves. He's oddly grand, though, and commanding.

We sit face to face on the sinking bumpy daybed. One of my booted feet is curled under the other knee. My hands are wrapped against the coffee he's prepared. It's like him. Black, scaling, gritty, and comforting in a 'reverse-logic' sort of way. If I can stand this, I can stand anything…

Well. Beating around the bush will only result in even less hours of much-needed sleep. "About this… the clearing," I clear my throat. Roll my shoulders inwards to stop the trembling. It's not working, though, and some of the scalding coffee spills on my hands, on the inside of my thigh through the jeans. Immediately his hand is on the burn, appeasing it, and then it stays there. He looks at me with a half-ironic, half-supplicating fold of his thin lips, and whatever didn't work with Anthony suddenly swooshes-clicks into place and keeps clicking… keeps swooshing. Our eyes lock. My lips part. He takes his hand away.

"Please don’t." I never intended to say that. I don’t even know if I'm referring to the touch, or the interruption thereof. I only know that, however terrifying the contact of his hand was, the absence of it is worse. 

He stands and begins pacing the room. It's big enough for him to achieve three strides in one direction, and two in the other, but he paces anyway. He's looking down at me, and I'd rather he'd sit down again.

"You aren’t twitching and babbling like the other girls."

"I'm Hermione Granger." Oh. First time I actually sound like I want to. Not conceited, not unduly proud, but… we both know what I'm capable of. I've seen worse. No, of course… but I've seen my share. "I don't crumble…" until I'm alone. The pictures are coming again, and I fight them with all my might, my eyes crunched with the effort of fighting all that evil.

"Don't fight it," he says in that hypnotic voice of his. "Embrace it." Is he crazy? I open huge appalled eyes at him, and in turn his bear into the back of my skull, with a kind of grim satisfaction. 

He sits on the bed again. "I'm going to Legilimens you." It's not a threat or a request. He says, and he does.

All the horror of the day submerges me again. And I want to crumble, but I fight. 

"Don't fight." 

What does he want from me? I'm shaking and retching and tears streak my face and….

"You," he says as he pulls out, "are one of an extremely rare kind, that actually has enough inborn power to be able to branch into this, and not go crazy. Actually use this for your own means. Grow from this."

"This?" I sign with my hands the quotation from his words.

"This," he says simply, matter-of-factly, mimicking my gesture, "is the power of Evil. Dumbledore was wrong. Nothing approaches the power of Evil. Look at me," he says. 

I do. He performs what must be the inverse of Legilimens, and I fall into his mind. It's Hell. Yes, yes, the one medieval painters tried to frighten people with, all torture racks and flaming heads and screaming… a suffering which makes me regret I didn't actually kill myself in the clearing… and then I receive my first lesson in the raw power of power. And I learn more about Severus Snape than I've ever thought to ask, or wanted to know.

He is not disgusted by the torment and the agony and the sheer horror of… this. He bathes in it like an ashen Viking skull-drinking death idol in a tempestuous sea, revels in the strength of the cursed, salty waves coursing around and through him. Savors it. He takes that wretched, cursed energy of the screams and the suffering and the pain and feeds it to his magical power. I can feel his joy at the surge of might, the force radiating from him. It's dazzling, if black can dazzle. I'm flailing and drowning. I can't breathe.

After what feels like a century he lets me out, and I slump in his arms. I'm winded as if I'd swum against the current, fought the gales, and then sunk and drowned and been fished out by the hair. My whole body aches and I heave shallow painful breathes. The exhaustion I felt before is nothing compared to this empty feeling. I feel… like a balloon that has been filled to the max, and exploded.

"How can you?" I finally rasp.

He smoothes my forehead and my hair, then the temples, then the neck, then the sides of my torso…

"Wars," he croons in my ear, "are not won by heroic do-gooders galloping forwards on white horses. They're won by nasty people willing to do the gritty work so the photogenic heroes get the Witch-Weekly cover." His voice is half-teacher, half-gorged lover. But now it takes the edge of a laser sword. "I," he says, "am going to win this war."

"For whose side?" I think I've only thought it, but he answers with a rich chuckle which raises goose bumps on my skin.

"Why, yours, of course." His irony is unbearable.

"You're a good man," I persevere in a small broken ridiculous childish whimper, even as some little voice in my head tells me to go to sleep now, while my torn nails still have a little bit purchase on that cliff I'm going to fall off. 

"No," he says. "Throughout History, tens of millions of humans have lived through these horrors. The good ones who survived, and they are blessedly few, went on to do great, positive things with their lives. They still do. When nightmares keep them awake, they get up and build something else, new and shimmering, from the ashes and the debris. I do not. I dwell on misery. I'm unable not to lurk and wallow in it. I'm drawn to this. I think I crave it, the way others enjoy a walk in the sun. I draw my strength from it, and add to it with the powers it has given me. This is the very origin of the vicious circle. This is who I am. This is what you can be, too, if you so choose. The world needs people like us, if the builders are to be given a chance." His deep voice is raspy and smooth at the same time, terribly tempting…

My head is shaking feebly, and even that taxes the very little energy I have left. I'm still in his arms, more or less…

"And you know what?" he continues relentlessly. "Those good people… they'd never have made it if men like me hadn't done the dirty deeds, and continued doing them. For them. So the so-called heroes can look back and say, 'we vanquished the Evil.' They didn't. All throughout History, only evil people fighting for the side of Good vanquish Evil. If they don’t," he continues primly, "Evil wins.''

"As I said, Dumbledore was wrong. Love," he spits, "goodness… they're never enough." He rises, formidable, so much bigger than my little dingy room. "The Just," he intones in a theatrical voice I know he uses for quotations, "their toil is done by the hands of others." 

He pauses. "I am," he pauses again, "the others." His tone is quiet and terrible. 

"But people hate you for this…and they love… they loved Harry, and Dumbledore, and… all the good people…" If I sound any weaker, I'll kill myself in exasperation and shame. So I shut up. 

He smirks. "People need somebody to hate, and to fear. And it just happens other people need to be feared and hated. Some do it by waging evil on good people, by making their lives miserable. Some others, the most sophisticated, the most refined, the ones whose moral sense has not been damaged by their unusual tastes…"

He sits down again. His voice takes a hypnotic quality, low and resonating in my chest. "They wage an evil war on Evil. This is what we do. We feast on the bas-fonds and lick our pale chops from the blood of the damned. We embrace what others fear to imagine. We despise happiness, because we know its price is the willful forgetting of unsung sacrifices to Evil. We know happiness feeds from the suffering of others, so we are content with the absence of pain. There are not many of us. We are the unseen foundations of society. Usually," he adds in a suddenly worldly voice, "we hate each other… but for you and me… it could be different…"

He's smiling at his own grandiloquence, cradling me in his arms. "This is where you sleep, isn't' it?"

I can only nod, dumbly. He eases me on the sofa, nudges me a little, lies next to me. I understand, but I… it's been too long. I've been nothing but an empty, efficient shell for too long already. So I just look at him with hollow eyes as he takes off my boots, and my sweater, and the t-shirt… 

By dawn, short of crippling bodily harm, nobody will ever be able to do to my body something Severus Snape has not done to it before. I held when he told me to hold and kissed what he showed me to kiss. I clinched and opened on cue. Screamed when he made me, and knelt when he pushed me down. I've drowned in barbed, soul-scorching pleasure and unbearable pain, and he's reeled me back to him like a fish, time and time again. The pictures from the clearing have flashed and gone, their echo mingled with the power I've felt in him… and in me, at times, before I recoiled each time in horror, but each time a little more slowly.

He's getting clothed now, in the grey beginning of daylight. I think of yesterday's me, and laugh at how jaded and tough I thought I was. It's not a happy laugh.

He spares me a thin smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

"I need you to understand," his voice is the Professor's again," that how… pleasing has this interlude been, it was necessary for you to understand a few things. Teaching by example, and all that."

"You sacrificed yourself to complete my education, in other words." I surprise myself with the cynicism and the cold irony of my tone.

He's caught it too. "You see," he drops, "it's working." He passes a hand in his mussed hair, and it falls into place smooth and menacing, and he's him again, down to the faultless robes he certainly didn't have yesterday evening. 

He catches my gaze. "I didn't ask you for clothes yesterday, but since you gave me some… it would have been in bad form to refuse…"

And that way he had me weakened by my own feelings of hospitality and mothering. I try to think of a suitable epithet.

"In any case," he continues, "you should think of what I said. You have the innate gift…"

I snort at that. 

He silences me with his hand.

"Don't despise it, Granger. Maybe it's what you'll need to see us all through this war. Maybe this is what the Order needs for you to use, so the masses are protected. I thought this bloody idealism of you made you ready to sacrifice anything for the Greater Good… Are you ready to die then," he suddenly roars, "provided you'll be reminded as 'nice Hermione'? Is not soiling your white soul worth more than the lives of innocent children?"

He strides towards the bed, and whispers, from his height above, "Will you be ready to let your loved ones die, Granger, to _watch_ them die before your eyes after they've fought with you, maybe _for_ you, and not tap into a power you can heal them with, because it's… evil?"

 

I'm stricken dumb, and recoil a little in the bed, embarrassed at my lack of clothes, and the pervading lingering smell on me from our… activities during the night, and the unclean feeling of the still damp sheets, in front of his immaculate appearance. Gone the unkempt, slightly pitiable man.

"You don't have to like it, like I do," he continues more softly. "But it helps." He stiffens again. "You have one hour," he says, "to present yourself fully ready at the training session." 

 

Please review...even if it's to flame (especially?)


	4. Tete a tete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath or beginning? After the Battle of Halloween Snape takes Hermione in for a night of... teachings.

3d chapter  
Not mine.

As I wrote before, this is no fluff.

* * *

"We've been back six hours, and she's still not responding…" I look at Ariella, still twitching and mumbling on the pub floor. Flashbacks from the scene in the clearing mar everything I say and see, and my mind plays in a loop Snape's parting words, as he handed me a miniature jug before Apparating away. 

"You shall drink this, and let it take action for five minutes. You're not up to fighting anyway, no magical strength left. Immediately after, you shall bring that useless waif down there back to your burrow, or put her down, but don't let her here to be taken hostage. Oh, and… Miss Granger?" 

I could only nod and try not to puke all over myself again, or run to the woods howling for my mother. Although, when you think what there is in the woods, and what they did to mothers… sit tight and nod, then. 

"Don't mouth a word of what happened here before I've gone over it with you. Your silence can win the war... or inversely."

And he went.

 

"Time flies when you're having fun." Ron slouches on the stone floor, his back to the Three Heads' wall. I'm sitting just next to him, hands laced, drawing comfort from the simple goodness of our shoulders and ribs touching. We're all scattered haphazardly around, in various stages of liquefaction. Family. _Families are tortured and killed, and you worry for them until they are, and weep for them after_. Ariella hasn't let go of my hand ever since I've brought her back. The others were already there, recovering from a very short, very vicious clash which ended mysteriously, they say, as the Death Eaters just popped away after being hit with volleying burn hexes coming from… nowhere, and the massive hex-launching by the Hogwarts' teachers, rushed into Hogsmeade to Kingsley's urgent plea, under the Carrows' noses. Dedicated education professionals, they, even though that's not gonna do them good with their Board of Directors.

Somehow the Dementors seem to be confined to the Forest, and apparently can't make it into Hogsmeade... Good to know.

We're slumped and weary, too exhausted to eat, our minds full with the sounds and the sights and the strain of the day. My mind is full with pictures of…. Don't go there. I will not go there.

But I do. Nausea threatens. Again.

Snape hasn't been seen since the fight. Ryan says the Potions Teacher slunk back to his sickbed in Hogwarts, replacing the crude-ish manikin Poppy is nursing, for the Carrows' evening visit. There will certainly be a rendition of the attack, and eloquent threats to whoever has leaked the Halloween-visit program, though with tens of seventh- and sixth-year gushing about it since morning, and the Faculty, tracing the mole will be impossible. We hope so, at least. 

At some point Pansy mumbles "thanks" at Eric, looking at him from under the impressive egg she nurses on her forehead. 

"Why don't you just admit you tripped over your own boots instead of jumping as Eric signaled you to?" Cho's mouth is mean and drawn. She's hale and sound, and sour.

"I was sincerely thanking him, you cow. He pushed me just after he signaled, and the second hex flew over my head. I'd have been fried if I'd jumped."

"I didn't push you," Eric says.

"You certainly did. I felt a… something, and I fell. Only you were standing there, it was where all those hexes came from nowhere. I… I thought somebody had devised some charm or something, to give you some kind of fighting powers, to go with this weird battlefield control contraption of yours." 

"It wasn't me. And I have no magical fighting powers…" He sounds sad, at that, although his contraption felled many a Death Eater.

"It was Snape pushed you down." Cho's eyes are starry, now, and it gives a wholly unhealthy aura to her grim face. I'd use "creepy", if I dared.

"Oh, now you've a crush on Snape, too?" Pansy's more intent on attacking Cho than letting a Mudblood get dressed down? My, the things war does to us. Once again the pictures attack, and I shake my head to dissipate them. 

"He's saved my life," Cho says with a quiet defiance I've seen only in Ron yet.

"She's right." Ron Our Captain leans into my ear as the two girls bicker along. "Snape was Disillusioned, but he was fighting for us in Hogsmeade. He disappeared for a while, and then I identified him coming back through this widget he and Neville gave me to track everyone's magical signatures and correspond with Eric. He fights like a demon."

 _That's what he is_ , I want to shout, but I'm afraid to open even the smallest channel into what happened at the clearing. I've avoided the deluge of questions they hurled at me after their first shock at seeing me alive. I smile at the remembrance of the rib-splitting hug Ron grabbed me into, the pure joy in his eyes, the dazzling smile incongruous on his battle-weary grim face, suddenly so grown-up the freckles seem a grotesque mistake spread on his thrice-broken and badly repaired nose, because who's got time for esthetical Healing when there's a war going on. The exhilaration at finding each other alive and able to enjoy the love he and I share, untouched. Something else we owe Snape, I think, and a cold sliver of glass cuts into my chest. 

In the end we pick each other up from the floor, tuck Ariella in a makeshift bed behind the bar, and ingest the stew Rabelkus has prepared, and then the alcohol flows. We're usually wary from loss of control, but tonight… I think tonight none of us wants to look his or her dreams in the eye alone, and we react the way of trauma victims immemorial. I see couples forming, old couples like Cho with Patrick or Anselm and Luna, but also Ron and Hannah …I've spent months trying to tell him she'd be perfect for him, and I'm happy he finally acts on it, when I almost swallow from the nose as I catch Pansy and Eric sharing a… this kind of look. Well, she hit her head, didn't she? 

Anthony's trying to get my attention, and I know I really should… he's right for me in all aspects… the boy my whole family would have been delighted to see me bring home… but I can't. I give him a minute shake of my head and he nods his, sad but smiling. We've always understood each other perfectly. If only I could… but I can't. 

Well, his looks and his brains, he's only got to go cruising any Muggle bar, the way he does every so often. I give Anthony a little smile and tilt my head to the door, and, of course, he understands. From the corner of my eyes I see Ron giving me a worried glance over Hannah's head, and I signal him to mind his own business. Hers, actually.

Anthony responds to me with a mimic of his own, a mix of wistful, amused, ironic and tender… I so wish I could. We exchange another thousand words in two grimaces, and this third brother-in-arms of mine downs a small phial of Invigorata potion, arranges his curly mane and his Muggle clothes, and walks out, whistling, giving me a small wiggle of his elegant fingers.

As they sing in football stadiums, he never has to walk alone.

Speaking of which…Snape's materialized. One look at him and Rabelkus doesn't bother to pour the Firewhisky into a glass, sends the square flask gliding towards him on the bartop. 

He slurps and smacks his lips, glaring at us, a wicked angry grimace I can only associate with him finding us rummaging in his personal reserves. Ignorant bliss. "Luck is blind," he drawls at Ron. "I've never seen such a sloppy, amateurish fighting arrangement. Chess whiz?" He snorts. "As to you," he turns to Pansy, "you owe your life to the Mudblood here…" his chin is pointing aggressively at Eric, "and to your own clumsiness. Pride of my House, be gone."

His eyes censoriously row over our seating (and hugging) arrangements, the empty bottles strewn on the table. "Party's over," he suddenly decrees.

"But…"

He silences Anselm with only a frown. "I may not be your teacher any more, Mr. Diggory. But I can see you've had enough for today. Besides…" his glance fixes theatrically on Anselm's hand under Luna's shirt, "puppies like you may need time to do whatever has you panting that way, but they also need sleep, and I shall expect you all tomorrow at eight in the cave, fit, for an important training session. Scat."

Unimaginably, we all stand up. They're all coupled up, and I stand out, like the proverbial sore… I'm sore all right. 

His smirk deepens. "I imagine I'll have to play knight once more and see you home, Granger." 

We live scattered all over the place, but never go home or stay alone before the flat has been given a serious once-over by a team of at least two. Once bitten.

We Apparate, then Portkey, then walk together in the night, go through all the tedious business of arriving and entering and unwarding and checking and… all my exhausted being is yearning for sleep, now. Except I know what kind of dreams await.

We are standing in my dingy bedsitter. We smell. Of battle, smoke, death, sweat and blood and Firewhisky and…

He must have caught the quiver of my nostrils, as he looks down at me from under his matted, smelly hair. "I suggest you take a shower before we sit down to business. Mix one spoonful of Invigorata in your shampoo. It can't make your hair worse in any case. Drink the rest." He looks around him, at the appliances and the sink masquerading as kitchenette against the farther wall. "I'll make the coffee."

I'm too numb to protest. When I come back fully clothed in jeans, a heavy sweater over thermal undies, and thick socks in my reserve boots, I feel less tired and exposed. The ginger-lemon-mint smell of the Invigorata pleasantly clings to my skin (and yes, what's left of my hacked curls is stronger, shinier, but also more… bouncy. Not that I'd care, but he remarked on it.) 

He looks at me, then at himself. "Would it be a terrible imposition if I were to ask you for the use of your shower?"

I wordlessly Accio a ready bundle of men's clothes from under the bed. It's not like I'm not used to having guests – hiding fugitives – spending the night.

He comes back looking like a huge, slightly menacing wet cat, his nose sticking out of his face and his wrists rather pathetically out of the grayish shirtsleeves. He's oddly grand, though, and commanding.

We sit face to face on the sinking bumpy daybed. One of my booted feet is curled under the other knee. My hands are wrapped against the coffee he's prepared. It's like him. Black, scaling, gritty, and comforting in a 'reverse-logic' sort of way. If I can stand this, I can stand anything…

Well. Beating around the bush will only result in even less hours of much-needed sleep. "About this… the clearing," I clear my throat. Roll my shoulders inwards to stop the trembling. It's not working, though, and some of the scalding coffee spills on my hands, on the inside of my thigh through the jeans. Immediately his hand is on the burn, appeasing it, and then it stays there. He looks at me with a half-ironic, half-supplicating fold of his thin lips, and whatever didn't work with Anthony suddenly swooshes-clicks into place and keeps clicking… keeps swooshing. Our eyes lock. My lips part. He takes his hand away.

"Please don’t." I never intended to say that. I don’t even know if I'm referring to the touch, or the interruption thereof. I only know that, however terrifying the contact of his hand was, the absence of it is worse. 

He stands and begins pacing the room. It's big enough for him to achieve three strides in one direction, and two in the other, but he paces anyway. He's looking down at me, and I'd rather he'd sit down again.

"You aren’t twitching and babbling like the other girls."

"I'm Hermione Granger." Oh. First time I actually sound like I want to. Not conceited, not unduly proud, but… we both know what I'm capable of. I've seen worse. No, of course… but I've seen my share. "I don't crumble…" until I'm alone. The pictures are coming again, and I fight them with all my might, my eyes crunched with the effort of fighting all that evil.

"Don't fight it," he says in that hypnotic voice of his. "Embrace it." Is he crazy? I open huge appalled eyes at him, and in turn his bear into the back of my skull, with a kind of grim satisfaction. 

He sits on the bed again. "I'm going to Legilimens you." It's not a threat or a request. He says, and he does.

All the horror of the day submerges me again. And I want to crumble, but I fight. 

"Don't fight." 

What does he want from me? I'm shaking and retching and tears streak my face and….

"You," he says as he pulls out, "are one of an extremely rare kind, that actually has enough inborn power to be able to branch into this, and not go crazy. Actually use this for your own means. Grow from this."

"This?" I sign with my hands the quotation from his words.

"This," he says simply, matter-of-factly, mimicking my gesture, "is the power of Evil. Dumbledore was wrong. Nothing approaches the power of Evil. Look at me," he says. 

I do. He performs what must be the inverse of Legilimens, and I fall into his mind. It's Hell. Yes, yes, the one medieval painters tried to frighten people with, all torture racks and flaming heads and screaming… a suffering which makes me regret I didn't actually kill myself in the clearing… and then I receive my first lesson in the raw power of power. And I learn more about Severus Snape than I've ever thought to ask, or wanted to know.

He is not disgusted by the torment and the agony and the sheer horror of… this. He bathes in it like an ashen Viking skull-drinking death idol in a tempestuous sea, revels in the strength of the cursed, salty waves coursing around and through him. Savors it. He takes that wretched, cursed energy of the screams and the suffering and the pain and feeds it to his magical power. I can feel his joy at the surge of might, the force radiating from him. It's dazzling, if black can dazzle. I'm flailing and drowning. I can't breathe.

After what feels like a century he lets me out, and I slump in his arms. I'm winded as if I'd swum against the current, fought the gales, and then sunk and drowned and been fished out by the hair. My whole body aches and I heave shallow painful breathes. The exhaustion I felt before is nothing compared to this empty feeling. I feel… like a balloon that has been filled to the max, and exploded.

"How can you?" I finally rasp.

He smoothes my forehead and my hair, then the temples, then the neck, then the sides of my torso…

"Wars," he croons in my ear, "are not won by heroic do-gooders galloping forwards on white horses. They're won by nasty people willing to do the gritty work so the photogenic heroes get the Witch-Weekly cover." His voice is half-teacher, half-gorged lover. But now it takes the edge of a laser sword. "I," he says, "am going to win this war."

"For whose side?" I think I've only thought it, but he answers with a rich chuckle which raises goose bumps on my skin.

"Why, yours, of course." His irony is unbearable.

"You're a good man," I persevere in a small broken ridiculous childish whimper, even as some little voice in my head tells me to go to sleep now, while my torn nails still have a little bit purchase on that cliff I'm going to fall off. 

"No," he says. "Throughout History, tens of millions of humans have lived through these horrors. The good ones who survived, and they are blessedly few, went on to do great, positive things with their lives. They still do. When nightmares keep them awake, they get up and build something else, new and shimmering, from the ashes and the debris. I do not. I dwell on misery. I'm unable not to lurk and wallow in it. I'm drawn to this. I think I crave it, the way others enjoy a walk in the sun. I draw my strength from it, and add to it with the powers it has given me. This is the very origin of the vicious circle. This is who I am. This is what you can be, too, if you so choose. The world needs people like us, if the builders are to be given a chance." His deep voice is raspy and smooth at the same time, terribly tempting…

My head is shaking feebly, and even that taxes the very little energy I have left. I'm still in his arms, more or less…

"And you know what?" he continues relentlessly. "Those good people… they'd never have made it if men like me hadn't done the dirty deeds, and continued doing them. For them. So the so-called heroes can look back and say, 'we vanquished the Evil.' They didn't. All throughout History, only evil people fighting for the side of Good vanquish Evil. If they don’t," he continues primly, "Evil wins.''

"As I said, Dumbledore was wrong. Love," he spits, "goodness… they're never enough." He rises, formidable, so much bigger than my little dingy room. "The Just," he intones in a theatrical voice I know he uses for quotations, "their toil is done by the hands of others." 

He pauses. "I am," he pauses again, "the others." His tone is quiet and terrible. 

"But people hate you for this…and they love… they loved Harry, and Dumbledore, and… all the good people…" If I sound any weaker, I'll kill myself in exasperation and shame. So I shut up. 

He smirks. "People need somebody to hate, and to fear. And it just happens other people need to be feared and hated. Some do it by waging evil on good people, by making their lives miserable. Some others, the most sophisticated, the most refined, the ones whose moral sense has not been damaged by their unusual tastes…"

He sits down again. His voice takes a hypnotic quality, low and resonating in my chest. "They wage an evil war on Evil. This is what we do. We feast on the bas-fonds and lick our pale chops from the blood of the damned. We embrace what others fear to imagine. We despise happiness, because we know its price is the willful forgetting of unsung sacrifices to Evil. We know happiness feeds from the suffering of others, so we are content with the absence of pain. There are not many of us. We are the unseen foundations of society. Usually," he adds in a suddenly worldly voice, "we hate each other… but for you and me… it could be different…"

He's smiling at his own grandiloquence, cradling me in his arms. "This is where you sleep, isn't' it?"

I can only nod, dumbly. He eases me on the sofa, nudges me a little, lies next to me. I understand, but I… it's been too long. I've been nothing but an empty, efficient shell for too long already. So I just look at him with hollow eyes as he takes off my boots, and my sweater, and the t-shirt… 

By dawn, short of crippling bodily harm, nobody will ever be able to do to my body something Severus Snape has not done to it before. I held when he told me to hold and kissed what he showed me to kiss. I clinched and opened on cue. Screamed when he made me, and knelt when he pushed me down. I've drowned in barbed, soul-scorching pleasure and unbearable pain, and he's reeled me back to him like a fish, time and time again. The pictures from the clearing have flashed and gone, their echo mingled with the power I've felt in him… and in me, at times, before I recoiled each time in horror, but each time a little more slowly.

He's getting clothed now, in the grey beginning of daylight. I think of yesterday's me, and laugh at how jaded and tough I thought I was. It's not a happy laugh.

He spares me a thin smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

"I need you to understand," his voice is the Professor's again," that how… pleasing has this interlude been, it was necessary for you to understand a few things. Teaching by example, and all that."

"You sacrificed yourself to complete my education, in other words." I surprise myself with the cynicism and the cold irony of my tone.

He's caught it too. "You see," he drops, "it's working." He passes a hand in his mussed hair, and it falls into place smooth and menacing, and he's him again, down to the faultless robes he certainly didn't have yesterday evening. 

He catches my gaze. "I didn't ask you for clothes yesterday, but since you gave me some… it would have been in bad form to refuse…"

And that way he had me weakened by my own feelings of hospitality and mothering. I try to think of a suitable epithet.

"In any case," he continues, "you should think of what I said. You have the innate gift…"

I snort at that. 

He silences me with his hand.

"Don't despise it, Granger. Maybe it's what you'll need to see us all through this war. Maybe this is what the Order needs for you to use, so the masses are protected. I thought this bloody idealism of you made you ready to sacrifice anything for the Greater Good… Are you ready to die then," he suddenly roars, "provided you'll be reminded as 'nice Hermione'? Is not soiling your white soul worth more than the lives of innocent children?"

He strides towards the bed, and whispers, from his height above, "Will you be ready to watch your loved ones die after they have fought with you, maybe for you, and not tap into a power you can heal them with, because it's… evil?"

I'm stricken dumb, and recoil a little in the bed, embarrassed at my lack of clothes, and the pervading lingering smell on me from our… activities during the night, and the unclean feeling of the still damp sheets, in front of his immaculate appearance. Gone the unkempt, slightly pitiable man.

"You don't have to like it, like I do," he continues more softly. "But it helps." He stiffens again. "You have one hour," he says, "to present yourself fully ready at the training session." 

 

Please review...even if it's to flame.


	5. His Own Brand of Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The past unfolds as its effects on now are revealed.
> 
> Snape is not a nice man (is it contagious?) But his appeal on the fairer sex only grows as he leads them all in a spiral of betrayal as his own brand of fidelity...

His Own brand of Loyalty

Still not mine.

Still no fluff. Remember, that's how you loved him first. ______________________________________________

 

5th Chapter- His Own brand of Loyalty

 

Patrick and Ariella are dead.

They left for the Muggle world, one week ago today, in a flurry of tears and recriminations. We've been going through the names of Hogwarts' seventh-years to find some replacements… there's also a British dissident escaped from Durmstrang in unclear circumstances, who's contacted me.

He's got a letter of introduction from Viktor, who's doing quite well at the head of a small band harassing Pureblood supremacists in his own vampire-ridden hills. I miss him, like you miss the taste of strawberry-banana smoothies you used to crave when you were in kindergarten… you remember you loved them, but are not quite sure you'd be able to stomach one today.

Cho's been bleary-eyed and pursed-lipped since her boyfriend left, and has thrown herself into Snape's training program like her life depended on it. Which is true for all of us, of course, but we slack now and then. She works… like I did on my NEWTs.

She follows Snape devotedly, like a puppy. 

I don't really mind. He's visited me at nights, many times already since our first memorable encounter after the Clearing Battle. We've reached a weird kind of understanding, where I'm his pupil and his outlet, his shelter some nights… and some others he talks to me as if I were his prize fighting dog, an animal he's grooming for bloodbath. Once he's given me a present, even... or tried to. A small locket made of black stone and red diamonds. It's beautiful, and I recoil from it and the cold power that emanates from it…

"You should take it," he said. "Some charms are worked into it, that disappeared from the world centuries ago. It's powerful enough to keep you safe from many a dark hex. Especially good against chest wounds, so much that I rely on it almost exclusively for that area. He stands from the sofabed we've been lying on in a semblance of peace, strides the length and width of my bedsitter in less than three seconds, turns upons himself… "Many good people have lost their lives to get it. Or trying to," he added as if in an afterthought.

"You keep it, then. Anyway," I tried to sound cold and cynical, "you need it more than I. What I'd like," I continued without thinking, "would be to get back the red pendant Bellatrix took from me during the Battle of Hogwarts. That I'd like." 

He looked at me with piercing eyes. "I didn't peg you for a sentimental little girl."

I shrugged. "You wouldn't understand." 

There's a charm enabling me to restore my family's memories in that pendant. Without that, I'm non-existing for them. 

He looked at me, holding my chin, and I felt his brain slipping into mine. Occlumency practice time. I trust him and all, but… there are things too private to share.

When he got out I felt quite sure he hadn't seen it… quite sure. I pressed my lips primly together.

He smiled at me for real then, that weird, rare, lopsided contortion of his features that's at the same time a smirk, and a supplication, and a challenge, and such a treason of the man's bone-deep terrible sadness, such a plea for somebody to see his soul behind these eyes, that I'd have cried with pity if it hadn't been his face sporting it. "So be it," he shrugged. "I'll will the locket to you, when it's time."

"Cool down, Snape, I'm not your wife. Besides… you'll probably outlive us all, after you've sold us to VDM." And we'd gone on with our little barbs war, and then our little physical war, and then our little deaths, as a preparation for the big one to come soon.

But now in the cave… From the looks she heaps on him, I vaguely wonder whether he spends the other nights with Cho, and can't really bring myself to care. Maybe he's pulling her through the same hardening boot camp he's been pulling me through, or maybe he just takes all the fun he can get. Or maybe my knowledge of his… infidelity is supposed to anchor me stronger in this dark side he's trying to root me in? 

I think of it too much, so maybe I do care a little. I shrug. There's been a recrudescence of violence lately. Nary a day passes without a skirmish, a killing of some sort, on our side or theirs. Our magical signature tracker programs, the ones Nev and Sev (sounds like the name of a nerdy pub, doesn't it?) have developed with Eric, signal concentrated DE activity in two principal locales. One of them in the now-infamous Halloween Clearing, where apparently a new Dark village of magical tents has sprouted, the other just outside London, in a direct Apparition line from the Ministry.

Something's brewing, and it's getting closer. The "others" are perfecting their fighting techniques, making their raids on families more frequent, and more deadly. We're getting better, too, which means worse as human beings. Snape's teachings never stop their scary dance in my head… and at least once, I've felt what can only be described as keen pleasure as I put a wounded Death Eater to death, in combat. 

I don't think I'll like myself at the end of the war… provided I'm there to see it, of course.

The stress is constant. When we're back at the cave we spend hours with Ron and Anthony, trying to plan, trying to make our team of thirteen adolescents, plus one Death Eater of doubtful allegiance, plus maybe five Aurors and ten schoolteachers, into an army able of taking almost a hundred determined, war-hardened Death Eaters, headed by a genius madman and seconded by Dementors. Hilarious, isn't it? Especially if you throw in the mass of the Aurors, who may or may not come to our help… or the other side's help. So we put our heads down and we plan. And we train. Neville and Eric work on the Contraption, Hannah and Cho are by now deadly, superbly efficient dueling machines, and responsible for bringing in food and supplies. Hannah and Ron are doing well together.

We all know it's hopeless, and we all work ourselves to the bone, because we know we deserve to win. Ha. 

"It can only work," Anthony says, his movie-star forehead creased like Einstein's, "if we somehow succeed in hitting them at the head, disorganize the headquarters, or…"

We're looking at the map of their village, compiled through the imagery given by the "Contraption", and Snape's reports.

"We could just ask Snape to go the one step further, when he's there at their reunions, and kill V.. You-Know," Ron cuts in. "Wonder how nobody thought of that one before."

The three of us laugh an uneasy laugh. I think. That's all I can do, right now. And then I think in diagonal.

"You know," I say slowly, "that Contraption of yours…the magical signature… it picks up on protective charms? Analyzes them in real-time?"

"Yes, Herm," Ron says slowly. "That's what it does." His pressed lips tell me that he's not used to having to explain the obvious to me, and if I have a point… please…

So I throw myself in. "The reason Snape has never attacked Vold.. him, provided he's really on our side of course, is because VDM's armor is based on ever-changing protective spells on top of the basic ones, and one never knows what kind of protection VDM has at a particular moment… so… if Snape could know… he could maybe craft a blitz attack…"

I see they've caught up on my idea, and in the ensuing silence their eyes tell the story we all see. It's possible, but what happens if the Contraption is detected? It's so dangerous it's stupid. 

But if it worked. 

How much time would Snape need to stay close enough to VDM to get an accurate diagnosis, and how can he read it discreetly enough, surrounded by Death Eaters, in VDM's immediate vicinity? And how do we adapt the detection and analysis charms to VDM's part-human, part-we-have-no-idea-what nature? Is Snape good enough a warrior to adapt, in zero time, the hex to the particular chip in VDM's ever-morphing armor? We sign Neville over and update him, then the four of us sit at the servers table and begin writing and scratching in earnest.

The buzz is interrupted by the noise of the doors and Luna's uncharacteristic high, vicious voice. "You had no right," she roars shrilly. "You're worse than a three-headed Nargle! You're… You..." she splutters. They're coming in from a rescue mission, an attack on a Muggle bar, she, Snape, Anselm and the new kid we've enlisted after seeing him fight in the clearing, a seventh-year Hufflepuff named Erasmus Wingert. I'd have liked to have a seventh year to my curriculum, too, although it's all too clear it's been instituted only to keep the students at Hogwarts' for one more year.

They're all glowering and screaming at Snape, who doesn't move a face muscle as he takes off his combat gear.

"What happened?" Cho positions herself between him and the others, ready to defend her new… patron? Friend? Lover?

"Your f… lover," spits Anselm, and I've never seen his face so distorted by hate, "sold Patrick and Ariella to his DE friends. "They… There's nobody left. All their family. We arrived too late, got their call when we were involved in the battle in this pub by the Thames…" All the fight suddenly leaves his face, and he looks like a small boy ready to cry. Most of us do, the ones not baring our teeth at Snape.

Cho turns upon him like a snake, but at the sight of his face she hesitates. "It isn't true, Severus… tell me it isn't true."

He shrugs. "I do not remember giving you permission to use my given name. Of course it's true," he says, supremely indifferent. "They thought they could scamper back to their little Mudblood lives, and let you die to protect them, and our world. They had it coming." In less than a heartbeat his back is protected by the wall and his wand on all of us, menacing. "How do you think," he growls, "that I have acquired such a standing with the Dark Lord, that I can provide you with such accurate information, and save your miserable lives, time and time again? By sweet talking Nagini? Think, you pathetic bunch of useless do-gooders." 

He sees, by our modified, befuddled stances, that only Cho is still ready to hex him, and he lowers his wand and begins pacing the cave, keeping her in his watchful sight.

"I give the Dark Lord valuable information," he reminds us simply. "Such as the hiding place of the members of that pitiful schoolchildren's secret club of yours. Would you rather I'd given him the cave? Or you? Or you?" He stares each of us down, except Ron and me. Cho he takes by the arm and brings her closer to him, and at my terrible dismay I feel what must be recognized as a pang of jealousy.

"I talked to your erstwhile boyfriend after I Healed you," he tells her. "I explained to him there was no way back, that this war couldn't be won with defectors… I even offered him a decent way out. Less dangerous, but still useful. He wouldn't listen. Then…" he shrugs. "They decided to abandon you, and they weren't even honorable about it. Yes, honorable," he hisses at my snort. "I expect from you honorable behavior, even if I don't practice it. He even refused me a last service. So… "

"So you took justice in your own hands." Ron's voice is so cold I whip my head at him. He sounds like Snape.

The other graces him with a smile, so terrible that it suddenly reminds me of the Halloween Clearing, of the horrors he lives with, and by. It's more frightening than his scowling face, even. 

"It's not justice, Weasley. It's strategy. Do you want me," he asks as he advances upon Ron, "to give you more inside information and plans, hot from VDM's paws? Do you?" he roars at him. He swirls, then calms down. "That's the price. Sometimes I have to give them something they want, too. And… this was a boon. They," his head tilts aside to indicate the other camp, "know I've been talking to your little club. I just had to tell them the boy was the only one I'd been in contact with enough to know his whereabouts. And that he was luckily visiting his parents. Weasley. Don't you send your people to dangerous missions? Those two… you had lost them both as soldiers, anyway. And it was a danger to the unity of your little band here… An incentive to defection. A chip in your trust in each other. Besides… At any time they were liable to go and run off their little filthy mouths, either to save their pitiful skins, or just to gain something. They were a liability, and now they're an asset."

"To you." My voice is pinched. I still feel Ariella's little hands holding on to mine and trembling. "Don't leave me, Hermione, don't leave me…"

"To you, too. Their blood wasn't in it."

He looks at me and I remember what he told me one evening, when I asked him about refreshing the stale potion ingredients with blood, like he did on the first time he came. 

"It doesn't help to refresh the ingredients. What it does, is reinforce the cohesion between the people whose blood is mixed in the potion, when they drink it."

Oh. So that's why he took blood from all of us. Except… "You didn't put your blood in," I accused.

He laughed, with some difficultly. "I'm a professional traitor, or had you forgotten? It works only with and towards people who are true to each other from the beginning. Besides," he added sotto voce, "I don't need it."

And he never opened the subject again.

Cho shakes herself. "How could you? How could you do that to me? After what we've shared… after you've held me in your arms and told me…"

"Told you what? That you are beautiful? That you deserve better than him? I'm still saying it." But he looks at me as he talks to her, and I smile back, condescendingly. Go ahead, I say wordlessly, this doesn't reach me. I feel like an old, diamond-bedecked matron witnessing a scene between her capitalist husband of forty years and his last little piece of a… of arm candy. Indulgent, but grim, too. 

He smirks at her again, and I cringe internally. I've learned his expressions enough. He's going to hurt her. "Are you telling me," he asks her with false softness, "that you still loved him? That I was nothing but a second-choice for you? Would you rather I sacrificed myself, than him, who abandoned you? Was it worse," he asks silkily, "than deciding who's going on those ridiculously dangerous missions Weasley dispatches you to? Worse than designating Granger to be left alone to face the Dementors in the Halloween Clearing while you were Apparating away to Hogsmeade? Do I have to remind you that it was you who suggested she was the one to be left behind to face alone an army of Dementors?"

I step forward. "Leave her alone."

He does, and she slumps down, her back to the wall.

But he's not done. "Would you rather," he continues, "I sacrificed all of you who've stayed here to fight?" He paces back and forth again, magisterially, all but treading upon Cho's supine form. "Remember," he says. "You have no choice. You cannot defect. Any of you here, is worth all the others. Except me, of course," he chortles, "who am valuable much more, if worth much less. You," he etches in all our minds, "are one body, and one soul. You are to be affected only by what happens to one of you."

Was this the reason he didn't mix his own blood in? My mind reels. 

Ron steps forward. He's grim too, and closed-face, and tense, and at this moment I love him even more than usual, with all the strength of my soul, and I know in my heart the strength of brotherly love, unstained by… all the things I do with Snape.

I make the error of looking at Snape, then, and he looks back at me… into me. "Don't think too much of your soul, Granger," he says aloud. "I thought this bloody idealism of yours made you ready to sacrifice anything for the Greater Good…" 

The irony of his makes my teeth ache.

Ron's impervious to our little a-partes. "You're so bloody smart and logical with everybody's life, Snape. What about your own?"

"I just admitted… no, boasted, of being an egotistical worthless coward, who's going to survive you all." Snape is back into his element, now, but Ron won't be fazed. He challenges him with the lunatic plan we've concocted, for Snape to go in all the way with the Contraption, and use it to break into VDM's armor through the weaknesses of his ever-changing protection hexes.

Characteristically, the older wizard sits down, his head on the side, and listens.

"Ridiculous theory," he snorts after some time, and begins punching holes in it. So we set to work in earnest. Patrick and Ariella will be mourned … but later. Because we all know nobody'll be left to mourn us, if something, anything, does not finally work against that growing cancer we're fighting… and not vanquishing.

Cho's nowhere to be seen, neither is Hannah.

After some time Snape rises. "Time to go and reap the fruits of my treachery," he says. “I'll come in with any worthy news I'll be able to collect." He spares me another look, and leaves.

We won't see him for a few days, and then he'll go back to his previous routine, dropping in every second or third evening, laden with ingredients, working us to the bone with dueling training and strategic planning, making himself generally hateful and indispensable, and leaving again. Sometimes he throws us a bone: the planned location of a DE attack, the magical signature of their new recruits… he never tells us what it is he gives to them, or if they know he's in touch. 

He always leaves, and always comes back. 

One day he comes in and announces his usual news, then he looks at me and says, "Bellatrix was particularly beautiful tonight. She had a red pendant… a very striking piece of jewelry."

"How can you suffer that," Cho asks me later. She wants nothing with Snape any more since the DE attack on Patrick and Ariella, won't talk to him, even. "He's with you, and he boasts about his other women."

I shrug. "We're not a couple," I say with my mind on Bellatrix' pendant, and the inexistent ways to retrieve it… short of killing the witch. "And really, I don't care." 

And in truth it doesn't bother me… that much. Eric, Ron, Neville, Anthony and I work on the Contraption like crazed lab animals, as if there was a chance. We even begin brewing a Polyjuice-based potion that could have Ron, or one of the others, masquerading as Snape, and doing the deed. We all spend nights devising chain-spelling charms to enable each of us to fight better, and safer. But I still have to kill Bellatrix.

And always, for three months, in a lopsided routine, Snape drops in, then leaves, then comes back again. 

Then one day he comes in the pub, when we're waiting there for Ron, Anselm and Luna, to show them a new feature of the Contraption. So in the meantime we show it to him, the modified Contraption, and its applications, and its potions… 

On top of the chip-in-the-armor analysis, and the use we do not yet dare to talk of aloud, it has other fantastic applications.

"It is," Neville tries to explain, "as if we'd translated the waves emitted by wizards into traceable signals, the way I've been doing with my plants. Instinctively at first, then you, Professor Snape isolated the chemical components of the signals, and then thanks to Herm's Arithmancy and Eric's maths and programming skills we've them on screen. A great combination of sense and sensitivity, I'd say."

"What the tree-hugger is trying to articulate," smirks Snape into his Firewhisky, “is that he's too much of a fine soul to be fighting dirty. He can only do it through blips on a screen, or enchanting his plants to sprout thorns when a Death Eater's around. Manly, that."

He snorts. "His mother would be ashamed of him, if she still could. She did get herself f...d into drooling madness by … never mind by who," he says with a half-rueful, half-proud rictus that all but shouts he was part of that 'who', "but she fought. Bravely. Face to face…. At least until somebody pushed her face down on her belly." He snorts. "Ask your Dad," he tells Pansy. "I think he's still got a scar from that evening. Or, rather, one of those evenings. She took some time to break.”

He takes another sip, apparently oblivious to the shift in Neville's and Pansy's faces, the horrified way they look at each other, and at him. 

"Have some fun," he mumbles. "Who can tell when it's gonna stop?" 

Eric's eyes are shifting from one face to another, trying to reconstruct and guess at the story all the others have grown up on. With. In spite of. And Eric, as usual, needs only a few small dots to see the whole picture. He takes his Firewhisky glass and smashes it into Snape's face. We all jump to protect him from Snape, and Pansy from Neville, and in the ensuing chaos the Contraption falls.

We're all paralyzed by the catastrophe. Only Snape reacts, apparently undisturbed by the fascinatingly disgusting mix of glass shards, blood, snot and Firewhisky dripping from his huge nose. He takes the Contraption and examines it, smearing it with the gruesome mix. Neville, who's made a dash for it, hesitates a fraction of a second at the sickening mess on it, and Snape shots him a wry amused look, then Stuns him. Pansy kneels near Neville to take care of him, but she recoils when she sees the way he looks at her. For the first time in my life, I see Pansy ready to cry.

The Contraption looks OK, but is emitting a weird beep. Snape pockets it. "Calm down," he says. "I'll work on it tonight. You're not fit to, anyway, any of you."

We're all too shocked to react. Ron would maybe, but he's still on that raid with Anselm and Luna.

Snape takes me home in deafening silence. When we're done with the wards and the checking he pushes me on the bed. "Listen," he says. "It's coming to an end. There will be a confrontation, soon, and I want you to have my locket. I want you to brew another batch of this asphodel potion, too, with the blood, and get everybody to drink it. Especially Pansy and Neville. The Death Eaters are planning to use the little story I told tonight, which is true, by the way, to get Neville to betray Pansy, and through her they'll get to all of you. You have to make them make their peace, soon. Before it comes at them from somewhere else."

"What about you," I ask.

"Don't worry about me. I'll be where I need to." His tone is so smug and cold it can only mean he's going to remove himself to a safe place. But who knows how many layers of deception cover his meaning?

"I don’t want the locket. And I don't believe you."

"I don't need you to. Remember: potion, training, spelled coats for fighting."

He gets up, pulls me towards him, leans with his back on the door. For a moment he cradles my head against his shoulder, in the crook of his elbows, his hands soft and caressing on my back… He smoothes his cheek against my hair, inhaling deeply… There's a rumble coming from his chest that's a lullaby, and a supplication, that's my name said again and again, that's so infinitely sad and soft and mournful I also want to cradle and soothe him…

But then it stops, and it shifts so abruptly I'm happy I didn’t let my defenses down. The whole hateful, violent act lasts no more than five minutes, up against the door. I feel like a prostitute, only he tears up my clothes, too, and leaves marks that will not fade for days.

"Ghastly. Good I didn’t have to pay for it at least," he says as he adjusts his pants. 

He pushes me off the door, and doesn't stop to help me back up when I get tangled in my knickers and trousers, all wrapped around my ankles, and fall in an awkward heap against the nearing wall, only he nudges my legs out of the way to allow him to open the door, his hand getting stuck for several seconds in my spare coat that's hanging near the entrance, the only one I have left now he's torn the other. 

He just goes out in the night.  
He just doesn't come back.

 

\-------------------------------

Please leave a review... I'm dying to know how people react to it.


	6. In the Cave Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's boiling to an end. Whose?

Still not mine.

 

For a whole week, tension builds up in what we feel in our bones is the last beeline to a decisive battle. He just doesn't come back.

We struggle and amass weapons and second-line recruits, who'll help in the street-to-street skirmishes if it comes to that, and we train, and we begin to build a second Contraption – he's left with ours, and we fight, and we worry.

We fight DEs wherever we can find them, trying not to kill, but to take prisoners back to the cave. Thanks to Snape's devoted training, apparently, I'm the best at interrogating them. Nothing you want to know about. 

But I'm efficient, and I only use the pain I inflict on them as a means to gather information. The pain, and the fear, and the humiliation, and… never mind. Cho's not bad, either, but she's too hot-headed about it, enthusiastic - even though she'll hotly deny it when Neville confronts her. Anyway, it's counter-productive, and I get more information than she does.

Neville and Ron have decided I'll be the lead interrogator. I've seen Ron's expression when he announced it. He was looking at me, and his eyes were… troubled. Murky. But it's war. And any snippet of information we can get this way, from disgustingly bad people who've chosen sadism as a way of life, may save innocent lives, he reminds everybody in a loud voice, as if he needed to convince himself. Besides, I always ask nicely… before. Give them a chance.

Cho's not happy about their choice, and we need her and her superb fighting skills. Also, the strengthened asphodel potion is at work, and the whims of any of ours take incredible precedence over anybody else's basic rights. So sometimes, when I feel I've exhausted the use of a particular prisoner, and if what he's confessed is revolting enough, I'll call her in… ask her help to get some more information out of the stubborn criminal, then get out of the room before the noise begins. The looks she gives me then… she's grateful. 

Sometimes we yearn for the fighting to come already, the clashes and the screams and the blood to clean this oppressive air we're chugging through our lungs. But then we think of how we'll fight, and then… we worry.

Essentially, we worry about strategy, and the outcome of the upcoming fight, and of its degenerating into an all-out war which we have no chance to win if we don't cut the snake's head- both snakes. So we work harder on the second Contraption, and its charms.

We worry about our families, those who still have one. I'm in the interesting position of not knowing whether I have a family left, and worrying all the more. So I put my head down and work harder on a strategy that'll get me closer to Bellatrix during the fighting, closer to my pendant.

And we worry about Snape, also. Did he take the Contraption to VDM? Is he planning with him the way he did with us, opening all our secrets to him? In any case, the possibility's put paid to any chance one of us will Polyjuice him- or herself and go pose as Snape to attack VDM from his inner circle. We also change our battle plans.

But, however jaded we've become, some of us also worry for him. In silence. He fell into the Contraption, Eric snorts. Another drinking binge, we hiss. He's hardly as fastidious as he used to be, we smirk.

He's found the eternal love of a hundred-bucks lady, Ron taunts, and Anthony slides a side glance at me (I laugh, but my belly twists itself into knots.) Giv'm a week, we say, and he'll be back hacking and stirring at his greasy workbench, smellier than ever. 

"This I can't live with," Hannah says, dousing her magical sword with a potion, and buffing it very carefully. "I'd rather he'd been caught and tortured to death than having to breathe near him for another moment." She wrinkles her aristocratic nose at Snape's remembered whisky-and-unwashed tang. Not that she'd really smell it, with the thirty fags she burns each day.

But we're worried, of course, so just to be sure, each one of us discreetly checks his whereabouts, during our sorties, and with the prisoners I interrogate. And we catch each other checking, warily following and protecting each other in smelly wizarding backstreets where we catch stray Death Eaters gone to puke or… worse, sordid Muggle bars, and dark websites. Each of us plays in his (or her) own different worlds, and in this one where we're together each of us is channeling her (or his) own paranoia. Because of course, we all know we're being watched. 

My nights are bleak, and when I get out, my very coat feels cold, but competently protective… like Snape. Then after two weeks we get the note, together with four small test tubes filled with blood. "Nobody got me. Go on with the plans as usual. Do NOT use the Contraption." Then we begin checking, to be sure, and making all possible tests on the samples. Because if they got him… 

We find no evidence of tampering, and the tests check out, and we're relieved. He's bottled and tubed Nagini's blood, and his own, and Bellatrix's, and even some slimy thing that may be VDM's… We enter the data warily into the new Contraption, because maybe they did get him and force him to write, or maybe he's sold us with no need to be forced.

Another sortie, and a rather bad fight where we're outnumbered five to one, in a small village where the Ministry hid the stocks of Floo powder. Anselm dies in a green flash under our eyes. I get hexed from behind just as I throw a protective spell to cover Ron's bloody unconscious form on the dirty pavement. Anselm's body lies besides me, Luna's struggling with two ruffians on the other side of the street. My coat flashes a sickly bright yellow and the hex rebounds, slicing two hidden DE fighters behind me. 

Her eyes even rounder with the surprise, Luna is staring at us. I catch one of the two she's been fighting with poised to hex her, and I reflexively point my wand at him, even without thinking any particular hex. My wand flashes brighter, and starker and yellow, and the two who were fighting Luna collapse. Both of them.

We make short work of the other guards, and hurry back to the cave with the Floo we've been able to take, and Ron's bloody form heavy over my shoulders. Luna has Anselm's corpse Reduced in a small box she cradles in her arms… 

The rest of the powder, too heavy for us to take, we burned on the spot, fearing a mass Flooing into places we don't want to see unwanted guests Flooing in. The pedestrians will have to… walk, for some time.

Back at the cave Anthony, the son of two doctors ("Real Doctors," he teases me, "not dentists"), Heals Ron as I debrief them on my coat's reaction to the hex I didn’t see coming, and then we check, and search, and finally I find Snape's locket hidden in the garment's lining. There's a note attached to it. 

"H,  
If you found it you probably know by now its extreme efficacy. Humoring your laughable squeamishness, I removed from it the spells your little narrow conscience may find objectionable. Keep it, otherwise you may not be able to thank me later."

I give the locket to Anthony and Neville, and they seriously attack the problem. After a few hours they give it back to me. "It's extremely precious," Anthony says with a troubled glance. "Ancient, too. And I daresay we'll be able to use it for the benefit of us all. But for the time being you should keep it in your coat, as it's been geared for you. It's also the way to make sure… others can benefit from its… capabilities, if need be. If you'd known you may have been able to do something for Anselm."

I trust they know what they're saying, involved as I am in other quite intricate calculations relating to the mass transportation of civil populations out of combat zones, so, uncharacteristically, I do what they say without asking questions.

We train, and we plan, and we fight.

After another week, on Sunday, another note. "Attack on Ministry and on Hogsmeade planned for Wednesday. I am off. PS- Dumbledore was right, the old fool." We frown and try to understand. Is he dead? Escaped? Betraying us? 

I can't stop thinking of the P.S., and daydreaming it was meant for me, an echo of our conversation that first night on my sofa. And if so, I've been given the most romantic compliment any woman can dream of. By Snape of all men. So logically, knowing Snape, he meant something else.

"Enough." Erasmus is the newest, but far from the dumbest. "Best thing we can do is stop thinking and train some more. I know I need it. Even if the attack is tomorrow, or Tuesday, training won't hurt."

"He's right." Luna's her usual cloudy self. "I do hope he's off to better pastures. And his color was also off, anyway. Look at that yellow when your coat flashed... He's got to put himself on again."

We exchange glances, shrug, and go to work.

Monday evening I sit with the gang on the cave's floor. We've given ourselves two hours to recover from yet another exhausting session, and ingest Invigorata instead of sleeping.

"Sleep when you're dead," Eric laughs, and fills us in on Muggle rock bands, but his levity sounds false, and we all know we're thinking of the same, constitutionally sleep-deprived man as we plaster artificial smiles on our faces.

"Funny," says Eric when he's had enough, and he looks so much like his sister Charity at this moment, I'm sure he's thinking of her. I'm sure he has magic. "We keep getting killed for one another, and we can't afford to care when one of us is down... or off." For some reason it strikes me as hilarious, and that's how Pansy finds us when she comes back from the loo, streaming with wet, stress-drunk laugh tears in our potions.

"Seriously," Hannah's head bobs gravely over her half-finished lager as she steals a half-worried, half-rueful glance at Cho, "we're better off with him dead. In memoriam, then." And she raises her glass in a mock-sad, half-victorious gesture.

I want to lash at her, but he suddenly appears, a black outline in the oblong rectangle of light of the doorframe of the cave, and the surprise stuns us all. 

"Rumors of my death," he utters, "have been vastly exaggerated." He takes a ragged breath, and I hear the blood gurgling in his windpipe. Chest wound, then. If only he'd kept the locket… 

"Sorry to disappoint," he rattles, and collapses to the floor in a rather undignified way.

"Or maybe just a little premature," I hear myself growl as I fight all the others to get to him first.

Neville reaches him first. "What -"

He doesn't finish his sentence. Snape's bloody hand trembles out of his cloak, and hands him a gory disgusting heap of shriveled meat. 

"What-"

"The Dark Lord's heart," Snape rasps. "The chip in the armor- a spell keeping it beating inside although the guy's been dead for twenty-some years. It's no more than a vampire's heart he implanted himself with… just had to know the spell to keep it going… It morphed once a day… like the changing of the guard. Thanks to the Contraption I- " He stops to cough blood… "Stopped the new daily flavor from kicking in so… I… pretended to make a chest massage… ripped open… caught it… now… s for real. Dead Dark Lord….I brought it because… You have to take a sample," he says with terrible difficulty, "feed it into the Contraption so you can locate any Horcruxes. Then burn this one with garlic, just in case. It'll smell like barbecue. Don't let Weasley eat it. No Ginger Lord..." 

Luna's horrified, but the rest of us… we laugh over the nausea.

Cho rushes into the Floo to her family's abode in London. As an ambassador, her father always knows "those things" earlier than the rest of the world. A few minutes later she's back, wild with glee, and her face suddenly resembles her own, before it changed into a bitter stone facade.

"He's right! He's right! Voldemort's dead! There's… there's a general call to arms, DEs are defecting all over the place, but some others are trying to get control of Government, there's a fight at the Halloween Clearing…" She looks at Snape, oddly indifferent. 

"Apparently he saved us," she says, and her face is a pinched harsh mask again. "And he took the only honorable way out, after he killed so many of ours, too. In memoriam, then." 

She nods at Hannah, and leaves to gear herself. "There are still battles to be fought in the street," says Cho. "Pity to miss all the fun."

Her friend looks at her with revolted eyes. 

Neville leaves Snape's side for a moment and jumps at Cho. "You're crazy? We'll save him, no matter what it takes. He's a hero. He…"

"He's right." Erasmus, Eric, Pansy… they're around him now, a protective human barrier. Anthony, Ron and Luna are foraging in the medical supplies chest. Cho shrugs and goes to the armory cupboard.

Snape on the floor has struggled to open his eyes, and follows the scene with a silent, flat stare. His lips curl in what looks like a small ironic smile, but under the blood gushing from his mouth it's hard to tell. Maybe it's cramp.

Anthony leans over him, opens, pokes, checks…"We'll have to put it down…" He beckons me to approach. His face is grim.

"Mr. Goldstein," Snape rasps in a pained parody of pleasantry. Blood gushes out stronger when he talks. "First time I must agree with the regretted Minerva. You might be the one graced with sense here, after all." His eyes are over me, black, huge, hungry, suppliant… but for what. I kneel near him, slide a coat under his head… take his hand. It's bloodless, light… it feels dead already, but suddenly it grasps mine, ever so feebly, as he tries to tell me something…"for you." Then the hand opens, inert, as his head falls down in exhaustion. His eyes close again. 

"You shut the f.. up and let me finish my sentence." Anthony's face is grim and feral, almost touching the great nose. He swears again, he who prides himself in keeping a clean mouth at all times. "We don't need your f…g blood potions to know you're one of us, Snape. What I was saying was, we'll have to put this locket of yours which you gave to Hermione down to work. You should have been wearing since it's obviously been adapted to you before you modified it for her, so it'll only work if she's ready to give some of her own magical strength to you, through the locket." At each "you" he's been viciously poking the wounded chest of the fallen man. He's furious. "You should have trusted us to help you. This wound was visibly made after you took his heart out. Otherwise you wouldn't have had the strength. Too much blood. You couldn't Apparate away at once? Had to pick another quarrel?"

Snape opens his eyes again… he's looking smug. "Right in one. There's something else I had to get. Bloody good doctor, you. Too bad it's not going to help you in my case." 

He's dying, and he's smug.

Anthony looks at me askance, and I nod dumbly, and keep nodding like the small dog people put by the back window of their cars. "Show me what I must do," I tell.

Ron approaches. "Can you make him fully aware without endangering him?" he asks Anthony.

Anthony nods, signals him to wait. He shows me what to do with the locket, and I begin the procedure, hearing from the side Anthony and Ron talking to Snape.

"Mister Snape… Professor. Listen. I'm leaving you here with Anthony and Hermione, and Luna. The others… we're going to fight. We… you gave us a chance to win, sir, you practically won this war for us… and I'm not going to waste it."

"You've beaten and frightened and ragged us into a spitting good unit, instead of a gaggle of bickering schoolchildren. Just one thing I want you to know, sir." 

Ron's voice is clear and decided, as it is always now, but thick too, with a slight rasp. "If I'm not coming back, sir, I want you to know I died with the greatest admiration for you in my heart, and with gratitude." It's Ron's heart, clean and pure and good and determined, and Ron's words, just a little bit clumsy and ridiculous. I love him so much I'd hit him for talking about not coming back, but I'm busy with the magical equivalent of a transfusion from my magic into the locket, and I can only glare at him.

"Something else," Ron says. "If I'm not coming back… and you're not keeping good care of my Hermione here the way you should, I'll still find you if I must turn myself into another Peeves. And if I am coming back, I'll be expecting a key to the house you'll certainly make for yourselves together. And all of us who make it today, we'll be visiting often. There'd better be food, cooked by you not Hermione. Barbecued hearts with garlic. That's a threat, sir." He rises, swallows, and gives Snape a full military salute, then he turns on his heels. He comes to me, and hugs me within an inch of my life (around the locket), and leaves me. Hannah goes with him, and the others follow. 

Kneel. Rise. Salute. Hug. Go.

Die? 

All of them salute Snape, except Cho. Eric looks as if he's going to say something, but instead he swallows hard, takes the bloodless hand into his, presses, and goes, too.

They all leave for the fight, and I know Anthony and Luna and I will be joining in, as soon as Snape is either stabilized, or completely dead. Because the magic of the locket may be ever so powerful, and Anthony a gifted Healer in the making, but Snape's still dying. It'd take a miracle to save him… A miracle, or… I won't even think about that. 

About what Snape would probably do. Has done many times.

We can only try, and wait. Anthony is weaving intricate spells, looking at me every five seconds to see if there's enough. Finally I've poured enough into the locket. 

Anthony opens the cloak of the fallen wizard, his hands stained red from the blood soaking the garment, then rips the shirt open… what little there is left to rip, as the whole chest looks like a bloody crater. 

He's going to die. I suddenly panic. I remember all we had together, all he did for us, and I know he's reared me to be his successor, but I want him, desperately, to live. Not only because I don't want to inherit him in this evil he's taught me to use… assume that horrible role he's taken upon himself.

I want to teach him the reverse of what he's taught me. Dumbledore was right, he wrote. Maybe he'll accept to learn, maybe I'll coax one other real smile out of him. Maybe he has a chance. Maybe we have. Maybe not. Just don't let him die… don’t let him die. 

Anthony looks at another small object that Snape's other hand, the one that was hidden in his clothes, is offering him, frowns as in remembrance of something long-forgotten, and throws the widget to me, his eyes nonplussed. My hands stain, too, as I catch. My red pendant, dangling from a new gold chain probably belonging to Bellatrix, is dripping Snape's blood on my robes. 

"So this is what you did after ripping VDM's heart," Anthony says to him. "Went shopping for jewelry." There's a catch in his throat.

"Suicide by pendant recovery," I growl. I think of my parents, and of the love we share, and raise my eyes to Snape. A last flash of reverse Legilimency, and he sends me back the picture I thought I had hidden from him, the picture of my parents' memories flowing into the pendant. 

He looks at me with almost… kindness in his eyes, and closes them again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews feed the Muse


	7. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is it over?

Epilogue.

Don't let him die. 

Images of the Halloween Clearing and of his black form Kissing a Dementor to save me from the onslaught. Images of our first night and a surge of the terrifying power he imparted me then. Images from his forlorn smile as he willed me the locket, this distorted expression on his tired face, that yearned to be met with humanity even as his words sought to provoke scorn… Images of his feral growls at me, at us, and of the kindness in his eyes just before they closed.

Don't let him die. 

Imagined images of his meetings with the Dark Lord and the pain he imposed on himself for our sakes, of this foolhardy prostitution he imposed on himself for years, and of the reward he's awarded himself - redeeming himself by making another, even more foolhardy sacrifice, for me.

Don't let him die, I pray to whoever from the deepest part of my soul.

"Don't think too much of your soul, Granger," I remember him taunting me in the cave. "I thought this bloody idealism of yours made you ready to sacrifice anything for the Greater Good…" Like he's just done. 

Don't let him die. 

My heart is beating like it hasn’t beaten since Snape's locket protected me from certain death. The locket infused with Dark Magic, that he tricked me with after orchestrating that repulsive final embrace which left me with no empathy for him, and only the one coat he hid his locket in.

The locket which would probably have saved him.

 

Don't let him die. Don't let him die. Don't let him die. Don't let him die. The pit in my stomach is deepening.

 

His voice, the first morning after. Each word is distinctly etched in my soul. "Will you be ready to let your loved ones die, Granger, to watch them die before your eyes after they've fought with you, maybe for you, and not tap into a power you can heal them with, because it's… evil?"

 

He gave me that power. 

 

-FINIS-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original prompt was: "He may have been the biggest bastard they knew, but at the end they realized he was the glue holding them together."
> 
> I took is as a challenge to explore how much one is ready to sacrifice of his/herself for the Greater Good. The answer is Snape's. As usual.
> 
>  
> 
> The piece was written for the "Deeply Horrible" challenge, and it shows. Even so, I happen to be in love with (and in awe of) this Snape, who is to my mind the "real" character a YA author would tone down to cater to her impressionable audience. But then… she's the one owning him, and everything you recognized in that story.
> 
> Thanks to all of those who reviewed, and to those who PMd... your reviews and insight are pure joy.
> 
> I've been toying a lot with the idear of a sequel, which would be very much AU, but for now concentrate on o-fic. Or maybe it's better to leave it just like that?


End file.
